To have zero sympathy for the fishing industry?

[AgeLikeWine]

The U.K. fishing industry voted overwhelmingly for Brexit ; 92% voted Leave according to a poll from June 2016 (source : The Guardian).

Now they are bleating about the massive logistical and administrative problems and delays that they are encountering in trying to export their catch into EU markets. Today, fish transportation companies have been driving their lorries around central London to protest about the situation.

But this is what they voted for : to ‘take back control of our waters’. They voted Leave in the full knowledge that most of the U.K. catch was exported to Europe, and that that would obviously be more difficult after Brexit, so they should suck it up & stop whinging.

@Narniacalling

Well those small fishermen need to adapt or die. Sell direct to fancy restaurants in cities. Sell direct to locals and local restaurants Don’t just shove your fish on the market alongside the massive trawlers.

There’s lots of money to be made, one just needs to be innovative or own millions in quotas. You can’t make money just chugging along and hoping for the best

Except the restaurants are closed due to covid and many have adapted through covid for local communities but they only just survived that. I mostly buy direct from a few boats or use the local fishmonger but I live in a seaside town so it's pretty easy for me to do so once adding in small transport costs outside local communities it becomes very expensive.

@donewithitalltodayandxmas its great that its sold like that. I'm a mackerel snob will only eat it if caught that day as due to the high oil content it changes flavour and becomes very strong quickly and I used to catch it myself. I think people are scared of the unknown but fish is so quick and easy to cook!

More people worked for Debenhams than the fishing industry. All this fuss about the fishing industry seems a bit disproportionate.

@Comtesse

More people worked for Debenhams than the fishing industry. All this fuss about the fishing industry seems a bit disproportionate.

It’s because our nation looks down on retail workers and also because majority of fishing industry voted leave so not gaining much sympathy right now (people are actually quite worried for the loss of jobs in retail sector and hospitality but this thread shows how little sympathy there is for leave-voting fishing industry).

The eu still want fish , early days and both sides are getting used to things being a little different.

I guess if you call the wholesale loss of the livelihoods of Brexit voting fishermen 'things being a little different'....

Indeed.

@BrumBoo

I disagree with Brexit. Nothing in the last few years has swayed that opinion. However, its not the people's fault, it's the governments. They sold the dream of a land of milk and honey and people, real people who were struggling enough before this last nightmare year wanted to believe it.

I'm not going to gloat when it goes to shit, because it affects everyone no matter how they voted. People are going to lose entire livelihoods between Brexit and Covid, and it's mostly down to the greed of politicians, not the average Joe. I dont blame them bringing some anger straight to Westminster's door. They won't be the last.

Unfortunately people get the government they vote for, and in this case one with an 80 majority. So although I agree it’s their fault, who voted for them? And for such an important decision as Brexit, they should have done their own research, not listened to politicians or our biased press. Definitely helps makes the case for PR.

Hospitality, tourism, transport, entertainment, retail industries in massive difficulties right now. Roughly 10k people working in fisheries needs to be set alongside a much much bigger picture.

Nobody voted for that.

Sticking an X in the Leave box and then voting for the Tories to implement leaving the CU and the SM - that’s exactly what they voted for.

It’s almost like they didn’t understand what voting to become a third country actually meant.

@Scottishskifun:

• So you want whole communities and children to be plunged into poverty because they voted for brexit????!!!!

I didn't want brexit either but no way do I want to see the towns and communities around me to suffer.
Hasn't the last year been tough enough on people then to wish other people suffering and difficulties?
Have some humanity and decency.*

A LOT of remain voters voted to protect communities other than their own; and people they'd never met, industries they were directly involved with. When the referendum result was announced we were told to stop patronising those communities, who knew exactly what they were voting for, and to suck it up, etc etc. So why, now, should we all be expected to have sympathy and get behind the very people who've fucked over themselves and those who didn't want to leave in the first place?

Not read the whole thread but on the last point

Fishing and farming have this sort of romanticised vision of rustic men doing honest work in some kind of alternative version of the hovis ad.

Also in terms of population very few indeed know anything whatsoever about it.

So you JRM types who lets face it wants to go back to a feudal system, can wank on about some kind of fantasy salt of the earth types etc etc

Meanwhile everyone goes to shops, retail shop floors tend to be female dominated... It's just all a bit ordinary isn't it.

That would be my take on that.

I also find it interesting that the airlines expect to have cash on tap while other arguably more viable/ wide ranging geographically etc are going to the wall.

They were lied to, and they very naively assumed that the government would be at least somewhere of the vicinity of competent.

@Scottishskifun

Would love to know what fisherman are supposed to retrain as?

These are rural communities with not much around. The oil and gas downturn has made 10,000 redundancies in the last 12 months, renewable industry is largely based out of Edinburgh over 3 hours drive away from Peterhead or Fraserburgh. As for fishing industries on the remote West Coast or Shetland Isles...... What do you suppose a shetlander fisherman retrain as?
Ever been to Shetland......there is 1 tesco Lerwick has a few banks a few shops and a couple of hotels.

These aren't city communities and are minimum hours drives away, there isn't some remote scottish call centre available......

It's far better to try to resolve the situation and save the jobs then have more unemployment!

Almost... precarious, lacking resilience... like they could do with some EU money and a big market to do trade with

They were lied to

They chose to believe those lies. Other voices and opinions were available- in 2015, in 2016, and again in 2019.

This is absolutely a case of reaping what you sow.

Nothing will change until politicians and newspapers can be prosecuted for telling lies.
The UK has always been a plutocracy and always will be.

Nobody voted for that

Yes they did. They voted for all of it. That's what leavers need to understand - every change that happens as a result of brexit, they voted for that change. That's what their leave vote meant.

And they've spent the past 4.5 years telling us they knew exactly what they voted for. And being quite nasty about it (like a PP I too have been called a traitor and a Nazi and been harassed and harangued by very angry men - once on a train, where I couldn't escape). They cannot now say that they did not vote for this.

They will not be allowed to get away with it. They won. They need to get over it.

@Icantreachthepretzels

Nobody voted for that

Yes they did. They voted for all of it. That's what leavers need to understand - every change that happens as a result of brexit, they voted for that change. That's what their leave vote meant.

And they've spent the past 4.5 years telling us they knew exactly what they voted for. And being quite nasty about it (like a PP I too have been called a traitor and a Nazi and been harassed and harangued by very angry men - once on a train, where I couldn't escape). They cannot now say that they did not vote for this.

They will not be allowed to get away with it. They won. They need to get over it.

This this this. A thousand times

But I don't get it. I only found out about the quota sales today!

So there was a bigger quota.

UK fishing... Groups? Sold a quarter of it to fishing companies outside UK. (Why the hell was that allowed? Oh yeah capitalism)

UK fishing says we don't have be enough quota and EU boats are in our waters (erm yes see previous point)

UK fishing gets a shit ton of grants etc over the years from the EU

Fishing people vote to leave EU over quotas...

I mean that makes no sense to me. Is that how it happened? I only found out about the quota sale today. Why weren't the press telling the whole story even if the politicians weren't? Why was the money on from eu not flagged?

I'm just...?????

I didn't want brexit either but no way do I want to see the towns and communities around me to suffer.

This. Brexit as a whole makes me desperately sad, and watching individuals suffer like this; why would that bring me pleasure? Yes, I am hugely frustrated by people voting and not thinking and not researching. But this stuff is complicated. And it was reasonable to assume they were being offered two sensible options: Leave or Remain. So they picked one. So much blame must lie with political parties (well, one in particular) and with the politicians who then executed it all so badly.

The idea that 'remoaners' would be pleased to see jobs go, families suffer, because of Brexit. Is one I have seen before on here.

I would love to be proved wrong. To have prosperity and industry and investment and all that, for us and our children. Particularly in areas who have suffered so much since Thatcher, and with the London centric mindset of Westminster.

The idea that people like me would be gleeful at the idea of more children in poverty and more communities decimated says more about the person who says it, as far as I'm concerned.

Nobody ever bothered to say what leaving the eu would entail on the leave side. But people voted for it anyway. It was all some shitty hologram.

Fuck’em. They knew what they were voting for. They had access to the same information as everyone else. They helped drag us into this shitfest and now they have the absolute nerve to whinge about it.

@StrawberrySquash

I didn't want brexit either but no way do I want to see the towns and communities around me to suffer.

This. Brexit as a whole makes me desperately sad, and watching individuals suffer like this; why would that bring me pleasure? Yes, I am hugely frustrated by people voting and not thinking and not researching. But this stuff is complicated. And it was reasonable to assume they were being offered two sensible options: Leave or Remain. So they picked one. So much blame must lie with political parties (well, one in particular) and with the politicians who then executed it all so badly.

But again, they did vote for it! They deliberately chose one side over the other. And didn't bother to do any research. And seem surprised that it's going to bollocks.

I really think " it's reasonable to assume they were choosing between two sensible options" is hogwash.

@miljea we can export all over the world and complete paperwork etc for this all the time, the trouble is they are not used to doing this and time taken etc , so this may improve
Also in general probably lots of places are ordering less, lots of restaurants etc across europe are also shut / less busy so likely also would of been a small affect as well
Lets see if there is still these same issues in a month.

@NiceGerbil but that's what a lot of posters are then saying? That fishing (and some comments about farming) communities should be left to suffer and collapse. These communities are trying to trade yet produce is rotting on lorries.
That remote communities should then retrain (not sure in what given what's around) or all move to cities, that they have made their bed so should then suffer the consequences of unemployment.

These are all comments on this thread.

I didn't vote brexit many in Scotland didn't either but I don't wish to see the rural and fishing areas around me become desolate because of it. I think many people don't have a grasp of how rural and coastal life works or the reality of it. Its already difficult and a balancing act.

It's not just Scotland either Cornwall also has a large fishing/rural community with a average salary which is 5k less than the national average.

I really can't agree with that choice idea.

The Scottish fish industry site has front and Central how much investment they've had from the EU.

The fish industry must have known about the quota sales. A pp said her DH had been fishing for 35 years. So he would have known that, for sure.

It reminds of the farmers in ? Cornwall who voted to leave and then asked the govt to pay the money that they were getting from the EU in subsidies :/

In the end it wasn't a head vote for anyone. It was a heart vote.

I feel and have always felt an affinity with Europe, I like being part of that wider community. We share such a lot of history etc. We are neighbours and we essentially told them to fuck off.

I really hope the country does go on to economic success. With covid plus Brexit I'm not optimistic though.

But all the people who voted leave and are now whinging. (Bar Scotland who I imagine will be wanting to leave the UK asap). What did you expect? Why did you think people wanted to remain? In this massive free trading bloc?

I dunno it's all silly.

The government will blame any economic issues on covid. Handy for them.